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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

尾

wěi
tail (Classifier: 條／条 c; 支 mn)
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 尸
  • 7 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 尸 (“person”) + 毛 (“hair; feather”).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *lməj (“tail; penis”) (STEDT). Cognate with Mizo mei (“tail”), Tibetan རྨེད (rmed, “tail; crupper of saddle”), Chepang मेः (meʔ, “tail”), Burmese အမြီး (a.mri:, “tail”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*lməj “tail; penis”
  • ideaChinese尸 “a living person who represents the dead person during a rite”
  • ideaChinese毛 “hair (of humans or animals); fur; feather (Classifier: 根 m; 條／条 c; 支 mn)”

Related: Mizo mei, Tibetan རྨེད, Chepang मेः, Burmese အမြီး

Words built on it: 屬, 尾巴

Meanings

character
  1. tail (Classifier: 條／条 c; 支 mn)
  2. end
  3. last; final
  4. Classifier for fish, snakes, shrimps, etc. ⇒ all nouns using this classifier
  5. (Chinese astronomy) Tail (one of Twenty-Eight Mansions)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

尾：微也。从到毛在尸後。古人或飾系尾，西南夷亦然。凡尾之屬皆从尾。今隸變作尾。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 鳥獸蟲魚等脊椎末梢突出的部分。 例：尾巴、牛尾、魚尾
  2. 事物的末端。與「頭」相對。 例：船尾、年尾、結尾
  3. 最後的、殘餘的、主要部分以外的。 例：尾數、尾款、尾聲
  4. 緊跟於後。 例：尾隨、尾擊
  5. 量詞。計算魚的數量的單位。 例：一尾魚

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 尾 was written 字形演變

  1. 尾 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 尾 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 尾 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 尾 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 尾 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 尾